August 3, 2016

Before I came to The Strong, my exposure to pinball had been limited to the Barbie Shakin’ Pinball handheld video game that I received for Christmas 1995. I have definitely come a long way in my pinball knowledge since then, from learning the proper terms for components I never knew existed (pop bumpers are my favorite) to discovering the game’s tumultuous and sometimes scandalous past (mob connections, anyone?). Once I saw the machines up close, I became fascinated with the several different types of artwork that appear on every pinball machine. The cabinet artwork can be painted, stenciled, and in more modern times, applied as decals or screen-printed directly onto the sides and front of the machine. It often features eye-catching motifs and bright colors. Once the side art grabs your eye and draws you closer, you notice the detail and intricate game design of the playfield. But my favorite part of a pinball machine is the backglass. This area often features the most complex artwork, displaying characters, multiple scenes, or other images that tell the story of the game. What interests me most about pinball backglasses, however, is not the imagery itself. I am fascinated by how the technique used to decorate the backglass connects to other forms of artwork throughout history, including some examples in the collection here at The Strong.

Traditionally, a pinball backglass is created by screen-printing an image face-down to the back of a piece of glass so that the scene can be viewed from the front. The colored image is then typically followed with additional layers of white or black in order to control the diffusion of light. These layers—especially the black—are sometimes applied selectively to increase contrast in dynamic areas, such as where lights flash behind numbers as points are scored during game play.

December 18, 2015

One of the best aspects of working at The Strong is the endless opportunity for nostalgia. Last year, I wrote about my family’s tradition of treating Black Friday shopping like a game. Shortly after writing that post, I was reminded of another cherished holiday tradition when staff at the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play included a post about the J. C. Penney holiday catalog on their Tumblr page. Throughout my childhood, the J. C. Penney Big Book was parked on the coffee table in the living room from the beginning of November through the middle of December. During those weeks, it was common to see family members flipping through the pages, a pen poised at the ready to circle anything that might catch the eye. As children, my mother led us to believe that by performing this ritual we were providing “hints” for Santa Claus, who apparently was the culprit when the giant catalog went missing in the days before Christmas.

This story, combined with the influence of A Miracle on 34th Street, led me to the only logical conclusion: Santa Claus worked at J. C. Penney. The store was obviously his workshop and the catalog was a magical gift directly from the hands of St. Nick himself. I therefore felt it my duty and privilege to convey my Christmas wishes through his preferred method and not be one of those deviant children who wrote a letter and asked for things that might not even be available from the “workshop.” Who needed a letter when the catalog had everything that a child could possibly wish for? Granted, images of boring adult stuff like bedspreads and blenders filled most of the volume, but Santa thoughtfully included a table of contents and color-coded the pages so I could quickly find the good things. Had my mother kept these catalogs, they would serve as a chronology of my childhood interests from dolls and Barbie’s Dream House, to the electronic keyboard that I used once, to the art supply kit that ultimately launched my interest in art and museum work.

October 6, 2015

What do you get when you take a grand Victorian mansion, all of its ornately detailed furnishings, wallpaper, wooden flooring, and inhabitants (including pets!), and shrink them down to 1/12 their natural size? Well, a dollhouse, of course!

Dollhouses were a passion for museum founder Margaret Woodbury Strong, as they have been for people throughout the centuries, dating as far back as the 1500s. It is easy to understand the appeal of these tiny treasures. Anyone who has had the pleasure of standing in front of a well-made dollhouse will tell you that the craftsmanship and passion that goes into creating each realistic detail is astounding. So I was thrilled to learn that the upcoming Build, Drive, Go! exhibit will feature several fully furnished dollhouses from the museum’s collection. While I dreamed of finally playing out my fantasy of becoming a 19th-century interior decorator, I did not anticipate the challenge that lay ahead.

June 4, 2015

Preparation for the new Toy Halls of Fame is in full swing at The Strong. Part of the preparation for the exhibit’s opening in September 2015 involves assessing objects to make sure that they can be safely displayed in a way that will preserve the artifacts while allowing guests to enjoy them during their visits. Recently, I examined one of the museum’s greatest treasures, “Europe Divided into its Kingdoms.” This 1766 puzzle, which depicts a map of Europe drawn by London cartographer John Spilsbury, is widely accepted as the world’s very first jigsaw puzzle. Spilsbury created his “dissected map” as an educational tool for children by pasting the map onto a thin mahogany board and then cutting the pieces along the geographical lines. Examples of Spilsbury’s dissected maps are rare, and only a few are known to exist in public collections.

When I first examined the puzzle, I marveled at its excellent condition. I was particularly impressed that the wood has not warped significantly over the puzzle’s two and a half century lifetime. Wood is hygroscopic, which means that it reacts to changes in its environment, especially humidity, by expanding and contracting. Wood usually expands across the grain, which is the direction that the fibers orient themselves as the tree grows. The grain is usually easily visualized on a piece of wood by looking at the dark and light patterns created by the growth rings. Because trees grow in a circle, the regularity of the grain in a board depends on how the board is cut from the tree. If the board is a tangential cut, the distribution of the grain is uneven which can cause warping. If the board is a radial cut the grain is distributed more evenly. The wood still reacts to changes in the environment, but it moves evenly across the whole board.

February 26, 2015

During our training, conservators usually specialize in a specific type of material, such as paper or paintings. As we become professionals, we find ourselves in institutions with diverse collections which requires broad conservation knowledge for all of the artifacts under our care, not just those comprised of our favorite material. Nowhere is this truer than at The Strong, where the museum’s collections range from paper dollhouse furniture to Barbie dolls to coin-operated arcade machines. The conservation challenges presented by this wide-ranging collection force me to think outside of the box every single day.

This was true when I was tasked with finding a way to safely mount and display “Mr. Monopoly.” The unique painting, which is in the form of an oversized jigsaw puzzle, was created by artist Eric Waugh during a performance at The Strong’s 2014 Play Ball. Mr. Waugh wowed the crowd by painting each of the puzzle pieces, which were mounted individually to the wall with Velcro, out of order. At the end, he assembled the pieces to reveal a stunning portrayal of everyone’s favorite capitalist, Mr. Monopoly. The painting was later auctioned off and generously donated to the museum by the auction winner. Though everyone was excited, we also recognized that the unusual format would present a few challenges. Why not just stick it in a frame and hang it, you ask? Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that.

November 25, 2014

In many families across America, preparing and then devouring the Thanksgiving Day dinner is followed by a quiet evening watching football or a Charlie Brown television special or simply sleeping off the tranquilizing effects of the largest meal you will eat all year. In my family though, the hours after the meal are not for relaxing—they are for strategizing.

At some point on Thanksgiving Day, my dad is sent out to purchase a newspaper. As soon as the pie plates are cleared, my mom, siblings, I, and now my teenaged niece and nephews, place the paper on the living room floor and sit cross-legged in a circle around it. We look like we are about to perform a ritual, and in a way I suppose we are. Mom unfolds the paper, tossing aside the grey newsprint portion and revealing a stack of glossy, colorful advertising circulars. We pass the circulars around the circle one by one, each person flipping through the ads and using black felt-tipped pens to mark items of interest. After cross-referencing and identifying the best deals, the fliers are arranged in a strategic order that was long ago dubbed the “game plan.” We might catch a few hours of sleep prior to rising before the sun. Then we pile into the car, armed with our game plan and mugs of hot tea or cocoa, and join the throng of cars heading up the highway to the shopping centers.

Yes, it is true. I am not ashamed (okay, maybe a little) to admit that for many years, Black Friday has been, and still is, an important part of my family’s Thanksgiving tradition. Coming home loaded with gifts in festively decorated shopping bags can be fun. But it was not until a colleague mentioned the museum’s collection of shopping bags that the connection between shopping and play dawned on me. Love it or hate it (there is no middle ground), nothing crystallizes the connection between play and shopping better than the phenomenon of Black Friday.